Yieldstreet Review

Yieldstreet Ratings at a Glance

Yieldstreet Quick Summary

How Does Yieldstreet Work?

Yieldstreet was founded by a team of financial professionals who realized that the biggest money makers are heavily diversified across a number of solid alternative investments that pay dividends or generate passive income. This realization was the seed that eventually grew into Yieldstreet. 

The founders wanted to create a platform that allows regular retail investors to diversify their portfolios with income-generating investments in the same way that large funds can. Yieldstreet uses a combination of its own money and investor capital to fund a variety of alternative investments. Raising capital in this fashion allows Yieldstreet investors the ability to diversify their portfolios and generate passive income on one, user-friendly platform. Yieldstreet has income-generating investments in the following areas:

• Real estate
• Art
• Short-term notes
• Structured notes
• Diversified investment funds
• Cryptocurrencies
• Legal notes
• Private equity
• Transportation
• Venture capital

This mix of alternative asset classes has allowed Yieldstreet to outperform traditional portfolios. From 2015 to June 2023, a traditional portfolio with 60% stocks and 40% bonds returned an annualized average of 6.2%, whereas Yieldstreet investments averaged an annualized return of 9.6% over the same period.

One challenge with alternative asset classes is that they are often only available as individual investments, making it difficult to build a diversified portfolio. Yieldstreet addresses this by offering pre-made portfolios, funds, and real estate investment trusts (REITs), allowing investors to diversify across multiple assets within a single investment.

However, there are some drawbacks. Yieldstreet requires a minimum investment of $10,000, with some opportunities requiring up to $25,000, which may exclude smaller and even some medium-sized investors.

Additionally, most of Yieldstreet’s investments are available only to accredited investors. To qualify as an accredited investor, you must have a minimum net worth of $1 million (excluding your primary residence) or an annual income of $200,000 ($300,000 if filing jointly).

From a performance perspective, the alternative investments offered by Yieldstreet are not tied to the stock market — which is by design. Aside from generating passive income, the entire point of an alternative investment is to grow wealth while shielding investors from the volatility of the stock market. 

Yieldstreet offerings are highly vetted by a talented group of financial professionals with a long track record of success. 

Investor fees are never pleasant, but they are necessary. While there are definitely some investment platforms with opaque fee structures that are invariably more expensive than the investor was expecting, Yieldstreet is not among them. It has an annual management and administrative fee that ranges from 0% to 2.5%. That is as simple and straightforward as it gets.

Yieldstreet’s mission as a platform is to make alternative investing easier for retail investors with a simple platform. This was accomplished — you can even sign up with a Gmail account.

The signup process starts with a quick questionnaire regarding your comfort level with alternative investments. It evaluates which type of investor you are (accredited or non-accredited) and records your income level. 

Then it gives you a menu of potential offerings to fit your profile. This list is smaller if you’re a non-accredited investor, but it’s a huge plus that there are offerings for non-accredited investors. The remaining account activation and funding process is pretty straightforward. You must verify your investor accreditation status before you can buy into the Yieldstreet offerings that require it. 

Additionally, you have to go through an ID verification process before you can invest at all. The process of browsing investments and reviewing the relevant documents is simple. Overall, the platform is well designed, and any investor with a basic understanding of the internet should be comfortable using Yieldstreet. 

Making alternative investments available to retail investors is a great mission, but one that is doomed to fail if investors don’t understand how they work or why they’re important. That’s why no platform is complete without a well-thought-out education section. Yieldstreet passes this test with flying colors.  

Click on the Learn tab of Yieldstreet’s landing page for a screen that lays out the different asset classes: real estate, marine, art, legal, or commercial. Clicking on any of those individual asset classes will take you to a primer on that asset, which includes a history of its past performance and the future outlook of the asset class. This is especially valuable to an investor who wants to buy art as an alternative investment but doesn’t quite understand how that would work or make money. 

Scroll down a little further for the Investor Toolkit and Alternative Investing sections. Click on either for a series of articles and videos on your chosen topic. The video options make things crystal clear and are a nice bonus to the other content. 

The Yieldstreet blog is another excellent resource. Topics covered include different emerging real estate markets and more, and the frequently asked questions and glossary are also helpful.

Yieldstreet has a variety of offerings, including the Yieldstreet Prism Fund. This is a multi-asset fund with holdings in a number of different asset classes and a buy-in of only $500. The Prism Fund essentially allows non-accredited investors to buy into a diversified portfolio and invest in assets that normally require accreditation.

Accredited investors have a few more options, including the Art Equity Fund, which buys equity shares in art from around the world and holds it while it appreciates. The buy-in here is $10,000 with a 5-year hold period and projected returns between 15% to 18%. 

Investors who want a more traditional alternative investment have a solid selection of real estate options with buy-ins between $10,000 to $50,000. Yieldstreet rounds out the offerings with an IRA-eligible structured note that has a $15,000 buy-in and a short-term note with a $500 buy-in.

Yieldstreet doesn’t have unlimited offerings, but what it offers was chosen with expertise and significant vetting. Yieldstreet is more focused on helping investors build wealth than flooding the platforms with choices. It’s also a huge plus that the addition of the Prism Fund means non-accredited investors can join the party, which wasn’t always the case with Yieldstreet offerings. '

Historical returns are a key indicator of the quality of offerings on a given platform. However, they are no guarantee of future success and don’t mean there is no risk of loss. Since Yieldstreet’s founding in 2015, it has funded over $3.5 billion worth of alternative investments and earned an average internal rate of return of 9.6%. 

Bear in mind, this is the average internal rate of return on all of Yieldstreet’s offerings. It doesn’t mean that every one of their offerings has turned a profit or that it’s impossible to lose money on Yieldstreet. It should, however, give retail investors confidence that the offerings on Yieldstreet have a good chance of achieving projected returns. 

Yieldstreet’s app not only runs smoothly, but it’s also available for both iOS and Samsung operating systems. There are many platforms that have mobile apps that only work with iPhones. Regardless of what type of phone you have, the Yieldstreet mobile app performs well and allows you to invest, track your investments, or review new options right in the palm of your hand. 

From top to bottom, the Yieldstreet platform is an impressive entry into the world of online investment platforms. It has a clear mission to make alternative investing easier for retail investors. If you’ve been thinking about how to diversify your portfolio, or just want to earn income through alternative investments, Yieldstreet could be the right platform for you. 

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